Comments on the U.S. Department of
State
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2007

The
U.S. Department of State Country Reports on Human Right
Practices (2007) acknowledges the continuing threat to
human rights and to democracy posed by the Indonesian
security forces, including both the military and police. The
report accurately notes in particular some of the
brutalities perpetrated by the Indonesian Special Forces
(Kopassus) and the militarized police (Brimob), though not
many of the violations that the U.S.-founded and funded
"Detachment 88" has been accused of. As in past years, the
report identifies various militia groups such as the Front
for the Defense of Islam, but fails to acknowledge
Indonesian military ties to and support for these militias.

Near the start of the
Indonesia chapter, the report correctly acknowledges
that the Indonesian military continues to be "partly
self-financed" and that this undermines "effective control"
of the forces by civilian authorities. We would add that the
failure to hold senior officers for past human rights crimes
and the continued existence of the territorial command
system also undermined civilian control. In addition, the
report fails to directly acknowledge in its initial summary
that the security forces "self-financing," includes illegal
enterprises ranging from blackmailing and intimidation of
legitimate businesses to corrupt business operations
directly carried out by the military. The report does
acknowledge in the body of the report military and police
complicity in people trafficking, prostitution and illegal
logging and correctly notes the central role of military and
police in league with developers in forcing villagers off
their land. The report acknowledges that in some instances
the military used force to dislodge civilians from their
homes in development projects specifically beneficial to the
military.

While failing to acknowledge the full range of abuse
perpetrated by the military and the police in summary
sections of the report, many of these crimes are detailed in
the interior of the report, including extrajudicial
killings, rape, beatings, torture and disfigurement and
intimidation of human rights advocates and groups. The
report contains a litany of "no developments" and "no known
developments" concerning for many of the cases of the rights
violations it does document. This indicates both a lack of
transparency and the ongoing fact that too many victims of
human rights violations have yet to see justice. Impunity
for many human rights violations remains the rule, not the
exception.

The report fails to note the intimidation of smaller
political parties by security forces and their militias.
These actions could significantly undermine the credibility
of the upcoming (2009) national elections.

In a common failing found throughout the report, violations
and crimes are usually framed as having "been reported by"
or "alleged by" various observers or victims rather than as
fact. For example, where military courts did convict
military personnel, the report comments pusillanimously that
"some civilians criticized the short length of sentences
imposed." This overly obliging framing of the problem
undermines the credibility and utility of the report
overall.

The report acknowledges the broad impunity accorded security
forces, especially senior officers but often obscures the
extent of the problem. In an especially flagrant example of
this tendency to avoid direct criticism of the military, the
report notes in connection with the atrocities that occurred
during 1999 in Timor-Leste that "of 18 original defendants
only [Timorese militia leader Eurico] Gutteres received a
jail sentence." The report fails to acknowledge that most of
those who escaped justice were military and police officers.
The report also nowhere notes that of this group, some have
subsequently received promotions and career-making
assignments.

West Papua

The report offers commendably detailed focus on West
Papua (Papua) arguably the area of the most egregious
on-going human rights violations. The report correctly
observes that travel restrictions and intimidation of human
rights advocates are common in Papua. The report fails to
note, however, that when visits are allowed, they are
frequently sharply curtailed or suffer direct security force
interference. Failure to report this fact is particularly
surprising in so far as a
U.S. congressman and the U.S. Ambassador experience such
interference personally in late 2007.

Moreover, the report frequently fails to observe in the
Papuan context that security force violations of rights,
many documented within the report, rarely result in criminal
prosecution of the perpetrators.

The report does address a fundamental Papuan human rights
concern, the ongoing policy of "transmigration" whereby
"settlers" from other islands in the archipelago are sent by
the Indonesia government to West Papua where they compete
with and frequently displace existing Papuan populations.
The policy, developed and implemented most aggressively
during the Suharto dictatorship, has had the effect of
ethnically cleansing most Papuan towns and many valuable
rural Papuan lands. However, the condemnation of the policy
is presented as having been voiced by "local residents"
rather than by numerous international human rights
organizations or by the report itself. The report's failure
to highlight and specifically condemn this policy ignores
the cautionary reality that transmigration elsewhere,
notably in West Kalimantan, has led to widespread civil
conflict.

The report acknowledges that security forces have played the
lead role in restricting legitimate, peaceful political
activity by Papuans. Nevertheless, it offers a summary
judgment that "the law provides citizens with the right to
change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised
this right in practice (through elections)." This
characterization ignores both the undermining by the central
government of the autonomy law to undermine the authority of
the locally-elected government, as well as persistent
actions by the central government's security forces to
preclude Papuan self-determination. Those actions have
constituted the basis for much of the violations of human
rights by the security force in the Papuan context.

The report acknowledges that Papuan religious leaders have
been the target of security force abuse but fails to note
that historically the brutal repression of all Papuan
political dissent, has led to the emergence of clergy as the
principal avenue for the expression of Papuan rights.

Finally, the State Department's annual human rights global
reporting exercise, by focusing on civil and political
rights, has consistently failed to address the abuse of
human rights in the social, cultural and economic spheres as
set forth in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This inadequate
focus on this broad category of rights is particularly
consequential in West Papua where decades of central
government neglect has deprived Papuans of their fundamental
rights to education, health care, employment and
self-realization through cultural development. It is in part
because of such neglect that charges of genocide against
Papuans have been raised by international human rights
observers.

Timor Truth & Justice

The discussion of the Timor-Leste - Indonesia Commission
on Truth and Friendship (CTF) is literally scattered in
several places in both the Indonesia and Timor-Leste
chapters. The Timor-Leste chapter refers to "little evident
progress" and notes that "the UN-appointed Commission of
Experts' report criticized its terms of reference for
contradicting international standards that prohibit impunity
for crimes against humanity." The Indonesia chapter is a
little bit more descriptive of what the CTF had done in the
past year, but does not note the COE's criticism. Neither
chapter describes the strong criticisms of civil society in
both countries and internationally of either the mandate or
conduct of the commission. The refusal of the UN to
cooperate with the CTF, formally announced in July 2007,
unless its terms of reference are changed also goes
unmentioned. And while the report does mention Indonesia's
Constitutional Court's annulling of national law
establishing a national Commission of Truth and
Reconciliation, it fails to draw the connection to the CTF
which suffers the same flaw highlighted by the court: the
ability to offer amnesty for serious crimes.

While the
Timor-Leste chapter also mentions the
final report of the Timor-Leste's Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (CAVR) in the context of the largely-dormant
serious crimes process, but misleadingly describes it as
investigating "less egregious human rights violations that
occurred between April 1974 and October 1999." In fact the
report documents a wide range of serious human rights crimes
committed during that time period, as well as actions and
failures by the international community which aided and
abetted Indonesia's international occupation. As in previous
years, the State Department report fails to acknowledge that
some of the CAVR's recommendations are directed at the
United States and Indonesia, or that both governments have
yet to formally respond to the report. There is no
discussion of the CAVR in the Indonesia chapter